News Release

Trillium Health Centre Awarded 'Highest Possible' Accreditation Status

Mississauga, ON - Trillium Health Centre recently celebrated a three-year Accreditation Award from the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA) - the highest award possible.  This highly-regarded 'seal of approval' is only given following an exhaustive scrutiny of every aspect of the organization.

“Accreditation is one of several valuable processes we engage in to gain an objective evaluation of the quality of our services,” says Jutta Schafler Argao, Director, Quality Outcomes & Evaluations. “We particularly value the opportunity the CCHSA process gives us to see how we compare to nationally accepted standards. At a minimum, we want to meet those standards.  Ideally, we want to raise the bar.”

During their on-site visit, the expert CCHSA survey team examined everything from patient care and safety to staff development and board governance, building and equipment maintenance, infection control and patient chart completion, community partnerships, and quality of employees work life. They met with teams of staff, patients, family members and community partners and they compared their own observations with Trillium’s self-assessment.

The survey team commended Trillium for the work done to address the recommendations made during the previous accreditation process in 2001. They particularly noted progress on substantial issues such as diversity and ethical decision making and observed that, “This organization is highly enthusiastic in its quality improvement work, and this is evident at all levels and in all teams.” One member of the survey team summed it up by saying, “This is a WOW organization!”

Achievements

Among the achievements and 'good practices' the Report highlighted were:

• Trillium’s work in establishing a ‘culture of safety’
• Our responsiveness in opening six ICU beds and a SARS clinic within 24 hours of the Ministry of Health’s request
• Trillium’s commitment to addressing diversity issues and making the hospital an accessible, welcoming place for all
• Establishing Health Information and Wellness Centres at both sites, pro-viding excellent resources and supports to care teams, clients and families
• Our successful engagement of community partners to support patient care
• ISO 14001 certification for Trillium’s environmental management strategy
• Status as a ‘Top 100 Employer’ for four consecutive years
• The use of technology and processes have already helped link the hospital with more than 100 community family physicians
• Performance Excellence Dashboard - an intranet-based system of performance indicator reporting, which teams use to track their progress against annual goals

Some Areas to Work on

While the Report was overwhelmingly positive, we always hope the accreditation process will identify areas where we can make improvements. Some suggestions the CCHSA team made include safer storage of equipment to minimize corridor clutter and potential risk to staff and patient safety; coordinated emergency evacuation practices with the McCall extended care facility at our Queensway Site; continued review of patient chart management; limiting overhead public paging to waking hours to allow a more restful environment for our patients.

“One of the values of volunteering to participate in this rigorous accreditation pro-cess is it provides us with an expert, objective look at every aspect of our organization,” says Ken White, Trillium’s President & CEO.  “In the process we not only learn what we do very well, but also where we have room to improve. My thanks to the staff, patients and members of the community who took part in this exercise and made it a meaningful, enriching experience for all of us.”

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For further information, contact:

Roula Giannidis
Public Relations Officer
(905) 848-7580, ext.2708

Media Contacts

For all media enquiries, please call Public Relations at 905-848-7580 ext. 3832.